This false view of the mathematics lies at the foundation of Whewell's view of a type in organized nature. He conceives a genus to consist of those species which resemble the typical species of the genus more than they resemble the typical species of any other genus. It follows from this view that a species might be created that would not belong to any genus, but resemble equally the types of two or three genera. Thus, our little rue-leaved anemone might belong to the meadow rues or to the wind-flowers, at the pleasure of the botanist. We believe that classification is vastly more real than this, real as geometry itself. Another instance of a similar want of idealism in Dr. Whewell may be found in Vol. II. p. 643:—"Nothing is added to the evidence of design by the perception of a unity of plan which in no way tends to promote the design." Now to one who believes, with us, that a thought is as real as the execution of the thought, the perception of a unity of plan is the highest evidence of design. No more convincing evidence of the existence of an Intelligent Designer is to be found than in the unity of plan,—and his design, thus proved, is the completion of the plan. For what purpose he would complete it, is a secondary question.
In this third edition many valuable additions have been made; and no tales of Oriental fancy could be more wonderful than some of these records of the discoveries in exact science made by our contemporaries. What more magical than the miracles performed every day in our telegraphic offices?—unless it be the transmission of human speech in that manner under the waves of the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe. What more like the dreams of alchemy than taking metallic casts, in cold metal, with infinitely more delicacy and accuracy than by melted metals,—taking them, too, from the most fragile and perishable moulds? What sounds more purely fanciful than to assert a connection between variations in the direction of the compass-needle and spots on the surface of the sun! or what is more improbable than that the period of solar spots should be ten years? What would seem to be more completely beyond the reach of human measurement than the relative velocities of light in air and in water, since the velocity in each is probably not less than a hundred thousand miles a second? Yet two different experimenters arrived, according to Whewell, in the same year, 1850, at the same result,— that the motion is slower in water; thus supplying the last link of experimental proof to establish the undulatory theory of light. While the records of science are strewn on every page with accounts of such triumphs of human skill and intellect, we see no need of resorting to fiction or to necromancy for the gratification of a natural taste for the marvellous.
It is true, Dr. Whewell does not give these discoveries, in the spirit of an alchemist, as marvels,—but in the spirit of a philosopher, as intellectual triumphs. Few men of our times have shown a more active and powerful mind, a more earnest love of truth for truth's sake, than the author of this History,—and few men have had a wider or more thorough knowledge of the achievements of other scientific men. Yet we are surprised, in reading this improved edition, written scarce a twelvemonth ago, to find how ignorant Dr. Whewell appears to have been of the existence or value of the contributions to knowledge made on this side the Atlantic. The chapter on Electro-Magnetism does not allude to the discoveries of Joseph Henry, in regard to induced currents, and the adaptation of varying batteries to varying circuits,—discoveries second in importance only to those of Faraday,—and which were among the direct means of leading Morse to the invention of the telegraph. The chapters on Geology do not mention Professor Hall, and only allude in a patronizing way to the labors of American geologists, and to the ease of "reducing their classification to its synonymes and equivalents in the Old World," as though the historian were not aware that Hall's nomenclature is adopted on the continent of Europe by the most eminent men in that department of science. In Geological Dynamics Dr. Whewell speaks slightingly of glacial action, and approves of Forbes's semifluid theory, in utter ignorance, it would seem, of the labors of the Swiss geologists who now honor America with their presence. The chapters on Zoology, and on Classifications of Animals, make no allusion to Agassiz's introduction of Embryology as an element in classification, which was published several years before the "close of 1856." The history of Neptune gives no hint of the fact, that its orbit was first determined through the labors of American astronomers, with all the accuracy that fifty years of observation might otherwise have been required to secure. Nor does Dr. Whewell allude to the fact, that Peirce alone has demonstrated the accuracy of Le Verrier's and Adams's computations, and shown that a planet in the place which they erroneously assigned to Neptune would produce the same perturbations of Uranus as those which Neptune produced. Much less does he allude to that wonderful demonstration by Peirce of the younger Bond's hypothesis, that the rings of Saturn are fluid; or to Peirce's remark, that the belt of the asteroids lies in the region in which the sun could most nearly sustain a ring. Yet all these points are more important than many of those which he introduces, and more to the purpose of his chapters.
Notwithstanding these deficiencies in Whewell's scholarship and in his philosophy, his History is a valuable addition to our modern literature, and gives a better sketch of the whole ground than can be found in any other single work. It is particularly valuable to those whose ordinary pursuits lead them into other fields than those of science, and we have known such to acknowledge their great obligations to these clearly written and most suggestive volumes.
The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer. By SAMUEL SMILES. From the Fourth London Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
There is something sublime about railway engineers. But what shall we say of the pioneer of this almost superhuman profession? The world would give much to know what Vulcan, Hercules, Theseus, and other celebrities of that sort, really did in their mortal lives to win the places they now occupy in our classical dictionaries, and what sort of people they really were. But whatever they did, manifestly somebody, within a generation or two, has done something quite as memorable. Whether the world is quite awake to the fact or not, it has lately entered on a new order of ages. Formerly it hovered about shores, and built its Tyres, Venices, Amsterdams, and London only near navigable waters, because it was easier to traverse a thousand miles of fluid than a hundred miles of solid surface. Now the case is nearly reversed. The iron rail is making the continent all coast, anywhere near neighbor to everywhere, and central cities as populous as seaports. Not only is all the fertility of the earth made available, but fertility itself can be made by our new power of transportation.
Who more than other man or men has done this? Is there any chance for a new mythology? Can we make a Saturn of Solomon de Caus, who caught a prophetic glimpse of the locomotive two hundred years ago, and went to a mad-house, without going mad, because a cardinal had the instinct to see that the hierarchy would get into hot water by allowing the French monarch to encourage steam? Can we make a Jupiter of Mr. Hudson, one bull having been plainly sacrificed to him? and shall Robert Schuyler serve us for Pluto? Shall we find Neptune, with his sleeves rolled up, on the North River, commanding the first practical steamboat, under the name of Robert Fulton? However this may be, we think Mr. Smiles has made out a quite available demigod in his well-sketched Railway Engineer. George Stephenson did not invent the railway or the locomotive, but he did first put the breath of its life into the latter. He built the first locomotive that could work more economically than a horse, and by so doing became the actual father of the railroad system. In 1814, he found out and applied the steam-blast, whereby the waste steam from the cylinders is used to increase the combustion, so that the harder the machine works, the greater is its power to work. From that moment he foresaw what has since happened, and fought like a Titan against the world—the men of land, the men of science, and the men of law—to bring it about.
But before we go farther, who was this George Stephenson? A collier-boy,—his father fireman to an old pumping-engine which drained a Northumbrian coal-mine,—his highest ambition of boyhood to be "taken on" to have something to do about the mine. And he was taken on to pick over the coal, and finally to groom the engine, which he did with the utmost care and veneration, learning how to keep it well and doctor it when ill. He took wonderfully to steam-engines, and finally, for their sake, to his letters, at the age of seventeen! He became steam-engineer to large mines. Of his own genius and humanity, he studied the nature of fire-damp explosions, and, what is not more wonderful than well proven, invented a miner's safety-lamp, on the same principle as Sir Humphrey Davy's, and tested it at the risk of his life, a month or two before Sir Humphrey invented his, or published a syllable about it to the world! He engineered the Stockton and Darlington Railway. He was thereupon appointed engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Though the means of transportation between those cities, some thirty miles, were so inadequate that it took longer to get cotton conveyed from Liverpool to Manchester than from New York to Liverpool, yet it was with the utmost difficulty that a grant of the right to build a railway could be obtained from Parliament. There was little faith in such roads, and still less in steam-traction. The land-owners were opposed to its passage through their domains, and obliged Mr. Stephenson to survey by stealth or at the risk of a broken head. So great was this opposition, that the projectors were fain to lay out their road for four miles across a remarkable Slough of Despond, called Chat Moss, where a scientific civil-engineer testified before Parliament that he did not think it practicable to make a railway, or, if practicable, at not less cost than £270,000 for cutting and embankment. George Stephenson, after being almost hooted out of the witness-box for testifying that it could be done, and that locomotives could draw trains over it and elsewhere at the rate of twelve miles an hour,—for which last extravagance his own friends rebuked him,—carried the road over Chat Moss for £28,000, and his friends over that at the rate of thirty miles an hour. Thus he broke the back of the war, and lived to fill England with railroads as the fruits of his victory; all which, and a great deal more of the same sort, the reader will find admirably told by Mr. Smiles,—albeit we cannot but smile too, that, when addressing the universal English people, he expects them to understand such provincialisms as wage for wages, leading coals for carrying coal, and the like. But, nevertheless, his freedom from literary pretence is really refreshing, and his thoroughness in matters of fact is worthy of almost unlimited commendation. On the important question, Who invented the locomotive steam-blast? had Mr. Smiles made in his book as good use of his materials as he has since elsewhere, he would have saved some engineers and one or two mechanical editors from putting their feet into unpleasant places. Our Railroad Manuals, that have adopted the error of attributing this great invention to "Timothy Hackworth, in 1827," should be made to read, "George Stephenson, in 1814." Their authors, and all others, should read Samuel Smiles, the uppermost, by a whole sky, of all railway biographers.
A Volume of Vocabularies, illustrating the Condition and Manners of our Forefathers, as well as the History of the Forms of Elementary Education and of the Languages spoken in this Island, from the Tenth Century to the Fifteenth. Edited, from MSS. in Public and Private Collections, by THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., etc. Privately printed. [London.] 1857. 8vo. pp. 291.
Mr. Wright, in editing this handsome volume, has done another service to the lovers and students of English glossology. Their thanks are also due to Mr. Joseph Mayer, who generously bore the expense of printing the book.